


A Cup of Tea

by GloriaMundi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, F/M, M/M, May/December Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 06:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5037163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is unusual, to say the least, for a woman approaching her centenary to take the virginity of a man seventy years her junior.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cup of Tea

It is unusual, to say the least, for a woman approaching her centenary to take the virginity of a man seventy years her junior. Except that Steve _isn't_ really seventy years her junior. He was born in 1918, a year before Peggy herself. But Peggy has lived every one of the years since her birth, and Steve ... Steve has not. At heart (and in diverse other parts of his anatomy, thinks Peggy, with a fond squeeze) he is still in his twenties, young and melodramatic and virile.

Not that Peggy has much much to complain about on that front. She doesn't know what was in that concoction that Lady Sif brewed for her (she'd have sent the dregs for analysis, but Sif whisked the pretty silver cup away with a smile that said she knew Peggy's game) but it's certainly done the trick.

"Seriously, Steve? All those flighty young things in the USO, and you never took advantage even once?"

Steve blushes. (Oh, he's still so very young.) "None of them were the right partner, Peggy."

"You were saving yourself for me?" Peggy can't help laughing. Gosh, even her _laugh_ is brighter. "Oh, Steve!"

Steve mutters something into the pillow. The sheet is tangled around his hips, but there's plenty of sweaty, flushed skin for Peggy to feast her eyes on. 

"What was that, darling?"

"I wanted it to mean something," says Steve, twisting round to turn that earnest look upon her.

"I always loved you," says Peggy, with perfect truth. Oh, she'd loved others too: but Steve had always held a special place in her heart. 

"Maybe that's what kept me from freezing completely, when I was in the ice."

Steve's witticism falls flat, because Peggy still doesn't like to think of those long cold years. True, Steve didn't know that he was buried, comatose, beneath the Greenland ice sheet: but _Peggy_ knew. She just hadn't realised that he wasn't dead.

She wishes that his other love could have remembered him too. Perhaps between the two of them (and isn't _that_ a thought!) they'd have managed to bring him back. But Peggy is still reeling from the revelations of the last few days -- SHIELD a front for Hydra, her old ally Alexander Pierce a traitor to his country, and James Barnes brainwashed until he forgot everything -- and she can't think about Bucky Barnes quite yet.

On the other hand, she suspects that Steve hasn't _stopped_ thinking about Barnes, even while Peggy was divesting him of ...

"And did you never, with James?"

"Peggy!" says Steve. He's clearly appalled, but Peggy is sure she's right.

"He loved you, Steve. And you loved him. There's no sin in that, and never was."

"I thought he was dead," says Steve to the bright floral print of Peggy's coverlet. 

"We all thought so, Steve," Peggy hastens to assure him. "I promise if we'd known he was Hydra's --"

"He was my first," says Steve. When he looks up at her, he's trying to smile, but there are tears in his eyes. She thinks she has never loved him so much. "We couldn't ... I mean, it wasn't. I. He loved women. He was always going to marry one of his girls, and I'd be Uncle Steve for their kids, an' --"

"Oh, Steve," says Peggy, and gathers him in her arms (there's an ominous creak from her shoulder, and she leans back against the headboard to take his weight. Sif's wonderful tea didn't fix _everything_ , then.) "Oh, my darling. I'm so very sorry."

Even Steve's weeping is supersoldierly. The sheets under Peggy's right side are soaked with his tears (as well as with those earlier fluids) by the time his sobs have lessened.

"Peggy," he says damply, "marry me."

Peggy knows it would be cruel to laugh at him, especially at this moment, and with a heroic effort she suppresses her mirth. "Steven," she says, "I'd be honoured. But I'm an old woman, and you'd be a widower far too soon: and besides, I want you to find a new life in the world as it is, not retreat into the past with me. Anyway," she says, stroking the wet hair back from his forehead, "I expect you'll be quite busy for a while. You won't have time to set up house with a new wife."

"Busy?" echoes Steve blankly. "What --"

"You _are_ going to bring him back, aren't you?" says Peggy, and she puts all her own guilt and horror and sorrow into those words. 

Steve must hear her feelings: must feel them, too. He straightens in her embrace, sets his jaw -- really, the dear man's almost a caricature of himself sometimes -- and nods. 

"I am," he says, and it's as solemn a vow as any spoken at the altar. "Peggy, I'm going to bring him home."


End file.
